Red Rocks!

Hello, friends! I am back in Bishop after meeting my friend, Derek, in Red Rocks for a week of fun! Red Rocks is beautiful and is literally right outside of Vegas. The glow from the city at night makes the campground there considerably brighter than the full moon that is currently lighting up the night at the campground here in Bishop. Just drive a few miles and you are into the sprawl of Vegas. But, fortunately, you forget about all that while climbing in the canyons of Red Rocks!

Derek was new to multi-pitch climbing so we chose Dark Shadows, a four pitch 5.8, for our first day in Red Rocks. The route was stellar and follows a big and intimidating dihedral between slick, varnished walls to the base of a big roof.


The climbing was great and after belaying me up the last pitch Derek had a minute to relax in the middle of the brown, varnished walls, several hundred feet off the deck!

The last pitch is the technical crux when you leave the dihedral for a widening crack in the right wall to anchors out at the base of the big roof. Derek climbed the pitch with ease and took his first big exposure on a route in stride.

A great first day in Red Rocks! We awoke the next morning to something we hadn't been expecting when we planned this trip out to the desert: snow!

It made climbing difficult but the scenery was beautiful!

So we opted for a few hours of bouldering instead. The next day was clear and the snow had largely disappeared so it was time for another multi-pitch adventure, Cat in the Hat, a 5 pitch 5.7. Derek led most of the route including this pitch where I accidentally sandbagged him.

The route goes up the crack between the roofs to the right of where Derek is climbing. At the belay Derek expressed his intention to lead up the crack. I pulled out the topo and pointed to the "steep brown wall" designation on the topo, indicating that I thought this was where the route went. Derek looked at me with relief and said "good thing you're here, I was going to go up that crack, it's probably 5.9 or something" and he proceeded to lead the pitch up the "steep brown wall." As I followed the pitch and the climbing became more difficult and the gear became sparse, I realized that we were definitely not on the 5.5 terrain that the topo had indicated this pitch to be. Sorry, Derek! It did prove to be the best climbing on the route, in my opinion, and Derek was justifiably exhilerated by his accomplishment, AFTER the pitch was over. Way to go, Derek! The party behind us also followed us up our "variation." Thankfully, they did not fall either.

We had more weather issues the following days and spent two more days cragging between snow flurries. Gotta love that desert weather!

Above, Derek follows the first pitch of the Misunderstanding (5.9) at the Black Velvet Canyon. The next pitch was a beautiful corner that the guidebook indicated was a fist crack, something we did not have the gear for. We decided to climb up and have a look for ourselves because it really did look like a hand-size crack from the ground. But what do you know, the guidebook was right and we had to bail for lack of the larger sized gear we would have needed to adequately protect the second pitch.

The single best pitch of climbing we did there was a short, single pitch finger crack called Straight Shooter (5.9+) on the Brass Wall. It was a beautiful line and great fun. Here's a picture of me leading it, courtesy of Justin, a fellow Southeasterner who met up with us and camped with us in Red Rocks for a couple of days.

For our final day of climbing at Red Rocks we chose a big objective, Johnny Vegas followed by Soler Slab. The climbing would not be difficult (5.6) but involved over 2000 feet of climbing, likely the most either of us had ever climbed in a single day.

Derek following the second pitch of Johnny Vegas and leading the first pitch of Soler Slab:

The climbing went well and we were able to move quickly and cover a lot of ground as we needed to do.

We made it to the top with plenty of daylight and a good appreciation for the amount of ground we had covered.

BUT, we still had to get down, which proved to be our crux. After a couple hours of searching we managed to find the rappel anchors and finish the rappels just before dark. But we still had quite a bit of third class slab down-climbing to complete in the dark. This ended in what the guidebook described as a 20 foot "slither" into a creekbed, which we would then follow back to the base of our route. Here, Derek prepares to make the slide:

We eventually did make it back to our packs and back to the car without incident. It was just slow going in the dark. Thank goodness for headlamps! We were both exhausted but I also felt proud that we had pulled it off. Although the climbing was not difficult, the sheer amount of it made it a big objective for us. Once back in Bishop I rested for TWO days before heading out for more climbing!